Just Eat, Autotrader, Pasta Evangelists, Feefo and Dignity are amongst organisations currently being investigated for obtaining, moderating or displaying misleading reviews. 

Feefo and Autotrader are being investigated for hiding bad (1-star)  reviews, in order to boost overall ratings. Just Eat are being investigated for overinflating reviews for select vendors. Dignity is being investigated for supposedly asking staff to write reviews on their behalf. Whilst Pasta Evangelists are being looked into for offering customers discounts on future orders in exchange for five-star reviews, without disclosing such to other consumers. 

The investigation will look at how reviews are obtained, moderated and displayed by these organisations. 

The organisations are said to be co-operating with the CMA investigations, with conclusions yet to be reached about whether any consumer laws have been broken. 

Should breaches be identified, the CMA may be able to impose fines on culpable organisations.

Reviews influence billions of pounds of UK spending, with 89% of people using reviews to inform product and service purchasing decisions. In April 2025, several practices including obtaining and posting fake, and paid-for reviews, were banned under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. 

Previous organisations are said to have previously breached consumer law with fake reviews, including Google and Amazon. The CMA did not impose fines on the organisations at the time but instead made them enforce changes to their practices to tackle fake reviews. 

In light of fake reviews reaching up to 50% of all online reviews, the CMA and regulators are under increasing pressure to tackle this and build consumer trust.

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Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said: “Fake reviews strike at the heart of consumer trust – with many of us worrying about misleading content when looking at reviews online.

“With household budgets under pressure, people need to know they’re getting genuine information – not reviews or star-ratings that have been manipulated to push them towards the wrong choice.   

“We’ve given businesses the time to get things right. Now we’re deploying our new powers to tackle some of the most harmful practices head on”.